Tales of Chinatown eBook

Now, the gesture of a woman piqued had called up the
deathless past. Hurrying through nearly empty
squalid streets, he found himself longing to pronounce
a name, to hear it spoken that he might linger over
its bitter sweetness. To this longing he presently
succumbed, and:

“Inez,” he whispered, and again more loudly,
“Inez.”

Such a wave of lonely wretchedness and remorse swept
up about his heart that he was almost overwhelmed
by it, yet he resigned himself to its ruthless cruelty
with a sort of savage joy. The shadowed ways
of Limehouse ceased to exist for him, and in spirit
he stood once more in a queer, climbing, sunbathed
street of Gibraltar looking out across that blue ribbon
of the Straits to where the African coast lay hidden
in the haze.

“I never knew,” he said aloud. And
one meeting this man who hurried along and muttered
to himself must have supposed him to be mad.
“I never knew. Oh, God! if I had only
known.”

But he was one of those to whom knowledge comes as
a bitter aftermath. When his regiment had received
orders to move from the Rock, and he had informed
Inez of his departure, she had turned aside, just
as Zahara had done; scornfully and in silence.
Because of his disbelief in her he had guarded his
heart against this beautiful Spanish girl who (as
he realized too late) had brought him the only real
happiness he had ever known. Often she had told
him of her brother, Miguel, who would kill her—­would
kill them both—­if he so much as suspected
their meetings; of her affianced husband, absent in
Tunis, whose jealousy knew no bounds.

He had pretended to believe, had even wanted to believe;
but the witchery of the girl’s presence removed,
he had laughed—­at himself and at Inez.
She was playing the Great Game, skilfully, exquisitely.
When he was gone—­there would soon be someone
else. Yet he had never told her that he doubted.
He had promised many things—­and had left
her.

She died by her own hand on the night of his departure.

Now, as a wandering taxi came into view: “Inez!”
he moaned—­“I never knew.”

That brother whom he had counted a myth had succeeded
in getting on board the transport. Before Grantham’s
inner vision the whole dreadful scene now was reenacted:
the struggle in the stateroom; he even seemed to hear
the sound of the shot, to see the Spaniard, drenched
with blood from a wound in his forehead, to hear his
cry:

“I cannot see! I cannot see! Mother
of Mercy! I have lost my sight!”

It had broken Grantham. The scandal was hushed
up, but retirement was inevitable. He knew,
too, that the light had gone out of the world for
him as it had gone for Miguel da Mura.

It is sometimes thus that a scallywag is made.

IV

THE STAR OF EGYPT

As Grantham went out by the side door, Hassan, soft
of foot, appeared. Crossing to the main door
he opened it and walked down the narrow corridor beyond.
Presently came the tap, tap, tap of a stick and a
sound of muttered conversation in some place below.